Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [119]
“And here enemies went and found me anyway, for all our caution.”
“So they did. You’re quite right. Well, then. We’ll leave this wretched back road, since there’s no use in hiding. We’re bound to be safer, once we reach a proper town. It’s the cursed dweomer at work in all of this, I suppose. We dwarves mostly leave such things alone, you know, except for a few spells and suchlike for our metals. Well, the women make a talisman or two, but that’s them, not us. I don’t trust dweomer, never have, either. A man starts mingling the natures of this world with some other one, or traveling round to peculiar places and messing about with what he finds there, and who knows where that’ll end up, eh? With trouble, usually, so there you are.”
On this flood of platitude Garin sailed away to wake the others.
When they set out that morning, they left the road they’d been following—such as it was—and headed across wild country, following a stream that wound between two hills. The footing there ran narrow and slick, a mere ridge bitten into the hillside in places, a series of rocks and puddles beside the stream at others. Garin spent most of his time and attention fussing with the mule, encouraging it where he could, giving it a good whack when it balked. Mic helped him, Otho hiked along wrapped in some black mood of his own, which all left Rhodry as the only man on any kind of guard. Although he considered carrying the bow strung and ready, its arrows had already failed him once. He slung it across his back and trusted in the bronze dagger instead.
The hills on either side of this difficult trail had once been forested, it seemed, because stumps and straggly saplings poked up among the tangled ferns and grass that covered them now. While they would have provided no hiding places for a man or even a dwarf, Rhodry could never be sure what size his peculiar enemies might take. As they picked their way along he kept his eyes moving, watching endlessly, searching both hillsides for unnatural motion, a possible threat. Since the storm was breaking up, the light kept changing, too, dark one moment, sunny the next in a dance of confusing shadows.
They had just cleared the first hill to the slightly better footing of a valley when Rhodry heard the sound, something like a whistle, more like a screech, and very familiar. He stopped dead, cocking his head to listen. Faint, very faint it sounded, and yet he could have sworn that it emanated from a spot nearby.
“Come along, you stupid elf!” Otho called out. “Don’t go falling behind. It’s dangerous.”
“Oh, hold your ugly tongue! Didn’t you hear that?”
The sound whispered again, a little trill of three sour notes.
“Hear what?” Otho said.
The other dwarves had stopped to listen as well, but they merely shrugged in puzzlement. For a moment Rhodry wondered if he were going daft. Yet again the whistle sounded, a little louder, a little nastier.
“That!” Mic said. “I do hear it.”
So, apparently, did the mule, because it flattened its ears and kicked out, rather randomly, with one hind leg. Rhodry spun round, staring at the hillside, examining every bit of the view. The whistle sounded a four-note melody, all warped and rasping, as if to mock his efforts.
“No one’s there,” Mic whispered. “But we hear it.”
“Let’s get marching, lads!” Garin snapped. “Hup! Forward! Let’s get out of here!”
Even the mule agreed, striding along briskly from then on. All that day they heard the whistle, sounding at random intervals, sometimes a screech, sometimes an ugly little tune. Whether they trekked through open valley or wooded hill, Rhodry never saw who was playing it. Early on, though, he recognized the sound as being like that of the whistle made of bone that he’d once carried round himself. He’d even played the thing once or twice, a bare few notes out of idle curiosity, though he was rather sorry now that he had.